Functional Finance Analyst

Staff – Non Union

Job Category
M&P – AAPS

Job Profile
AAPS Salaried – Administration, Level C

Job Title
Functional Finance Analyst

Department
Reporting Team Integrated Service Centre Finance and Operational Excellence VP Finance and Operations

Compensation Range
$6,677.33 – $10,433.50 CAD Monthly

The Compensation Range is the span between the minimum and maximum base salary for a position. The midpoint of the range is approximately halfway between the minimum and the maximum and represents an employee that possesses full job knowledge, qualifications and experience for the position. In the normal course, employees will be hired, transferred or promoted between the minimum and midpoint of the salary range for a job.

Posting End Date
August 3, 2023

Note: Applications will be accepted until 11:59 PM on the day prior to the Posting End Date above.

Job End Date

This position is expected to be filled by promotion/reassignment and is included here to inform you of its vacancy at the University.

At UBC, we believe that attracting and sustaining a diverse workforce is key to the successful pursuit of excellence in research, innovation, and learning for all faculty, staff and students. Our commitment to employment equity helps achieve inclusion and fairness, brings rich diversity to UBC as a workplace, and creates the necessary conditions for a rewarding career. 

Job Summary

The University of British Columbia (“UBC”) is a global centre for teaching, learning and research, consistently ranked among the top 20 public universities in the world and recently recognized as North America’s most international university. UBC is a diverse environment, with almost every industry vertical represented from healthcare, education, food and beverage, legal, media, real estate, etc. and with more than 70,000 members of the community UBC’s service providers need to be able to meet a variety of stakeholder needs with both robust and mature operational capabilities combined with the agility and innovation required to meet the ambitious objectives laid out in its new Strategic Plan: Shaping UBC’s Next Century.

The Integrated Service Centre (“ISC”) aligns practices and processes from Human Resource, Financial Operations, Comptroller’s Office, Student Services, and Information Technology.   In supporting UBC’s transition to an enterprise Workday Enterprise Resource Planning (“ERP”) Cloud-based system, the ISC provides a single, integrated service that will initially include Financial and Human Capital management services and later expand to include Student and Enterprise Planning.  The ISC seeks to continuously improve and adapt to future needs and requirements of UBC while providing a simple, intuitive, consistent user experience for UBC students, staff, faculty, and community partners.

The Functional Finance Analyst works as part of the Reports and Data team to lead the translation of finance reporting business needs to technical specification. Leads complex finance reporting, provide deep financial insight, adherence to best practices, problem management, governance structure around reporting and liaise business, functional and development teams.
The incumbent will also be responsible to partner with the ISC and the broader UBC community to optimize the use of Workday reporting, analytics, and planning modules.
Organizational Status
Reports to the ISC Reports and Data Manager. Works in partnership across the functional Finance, Student and HR teams and the broader UBC community to deliver an integrated reporting solution for all stakeholders. Frequently engages with teams and team members across the broader ISC and UBC community to understand business requirements and reporting needs, including interdependencies and impacts.
Work Performed

1) Acts as the product resource for Finance Reporting and related areas

– Partners with key stakeholders to develop business requirements; detail functional specification documents, technical specifications and test cases for finance reports.
– Identifies Finance reporting requirements for the ISC reporting team by consulting with the Finance functional teams and stakeholder community to determine design elements and prioritize enhancements, changes, and releases.
– Gathers, analyzes and defines reporting needs and requirements and develops reports; partners across the ISC to ensure complex onboard and offboard reports meet University requirements.
– Performs security impact assessment for new and changing reporting requirements. 
– Identifies and recommends reporting improvement areas with product leader. 
– Fields specialist knowledge tickets and support problem and incident resolutions for Finance reporting.
– Reviews and prioritize releases, enhancements, and changes.
– Partners across the ISC and broader UBC Community to identify continuous service improvement opportunities and remedial action to minimize risk, identifying the potential impact or degree of change for the UBC Community and Administrative Super-users.
– Conducts business tests for reporting validation and facilitates integrated testing.

2) Develops and maintains effective partnerships across the ISC and broader UBC community.

– The Incumbent is the finance subject matter expert and main point for finance reporting inquires across the ISC and technical professionals across campus where it relates to the ISC; collaborates across the ISC to align work, priorities and practices and to assess design needs for continuous improvement.

– Leads the efforts to develop a reporting framework that provides user-friendly access to the right information for the right people at the right time

– Partners with Application Sustainment, Finance Functional and UBC IT to support the definition of business needs, processes, and interdependencies in which guide the ISC’s report administration.

– Builds and fosters good working relationships, partners across the UBC community to achieve enterprise reporting objectives and goals.
– Engages in a two-way dialogue as necessary to understand the relationship/intersection between ISC Finance products/services and UBC’s application landscape for reporting requirements.
– Partners cross-functionally across the ISC to align work, priorities and practices, participating in stakeholder review meetings as appropriate.

3) Partners to move UBC’s practices from “system of record” to “platform of engagement” through collaborative and innovative efforts.

– Solicits feedback fostering an agile, innovative, and collaborative transformation experience.
– Partners with relevant stakeholders to resolve issues related to engagement, adoption, sustainment, and continuous improvement.
– Participates in and contributes to the UBC Operational Excellence community of practice.

4) Actively promotes best practices in the security and privacy of personal information and data; makes recommendations to improve processes and procedures where necessary.

5) Performs other related duties as required.

Consequence of Error/Judgement
Contributes to the broader Application Sustainment team and UBC’s Finance strategies. Supports decision-making regarding reports administration within an existing large, complex and campus-wide products and services. Focusing on partnerships and product excellence will ensure optimal functionality and customer satisfaction and support of ISC’s strategic goals.
Supervision Received
Reports to the Reports and Data Manager. Works in partnership on a team with wide latitude across the ISC. Work is reviewed in terms of quality, achievement against objectives, and focus on collaboration and innovation.
Supervision Given
Acts a mentor or coach to peers as required.
Minimum Qualifications
Undergraduate degree in a relevant discipline. Minimum of five years of related experience, or the equivalent combination of education and experience.
– Willingness to respect diverse perspectives, including perspectives in conflict with one’s own

– Demonstrates a commitment to enhancing one’s own awareness, knowledge, and skills related to equity, diversity, and inclusion

Preferred Qualifications

Undergraduate degree in a relevant discipline.   Relevant Disciplines include: Business Administration.  A minimum of 5 years of experience, in-depth knowledge of applications and the business requirements supporting them or the equivalent combination of education and experience.  Experience working with ERP and reports software is preferred. ITIL certification (minimum basic level) is an asset. Experience working with Workday in Finance function is preferred. Experience working in complex, academic environments is preferred (and specifically within UBC). Proven experience in report life cycle best practices within an evolving, complex product.

– Experience working a variety of software including Jira, Confluence and ticketing systems, such as ServiceNow.

– Demonstrated ability to engage with stakeholders and to analyze and provide insight regarding a range of Finance products.
– Proven knowledge of finance business processes and related interactions within complex organizational contexts.
– Demonstrated experience in agile management or other related methods is considered an asset.
– Demonstrated knowledge and proven experience in producing business requirements, use cases, user scenarios, user stories, and business process maps. 
– Demonstrated experience collaborating on cross-functional teams to meet critical, time-sensitive deadlines and communicating to diverse audiences. 
– Excellent interpersonal skills including active listening, written and verbal communication, and conflict management.
– Strong attention to detail and accuracy; exercise tact and discretion.
– Demonstrated ability to work in a collaborative and inclusive manner, fostering equitable experiences and a respectful environment through reflection, empathy, sensitivity, and curiosity towards differences across teams.
– Demonstrated experience in Change Management and working within an innovative, fast-paced environment.